Bios

Program directors

Linda Molnar has more than 20 years of experience in the life science and chemical industries, integrating her scientific research and engineering background with commercialization for startups, and international, government, and business environments. She joined NSF as an SBIR/STTR Program Director in 2017. Previously, she was co-founder and CEO of Simpatica Medicine, Inc., an artificial intelligence precision medicine company based in San Francisco, California. Linda founded and worked with life science startup companies from many universities. She has also provided strategic consultancy to venture capital firms, public companies, non-profit institutes, and the federal government. Her background includes positions as Managing Director in the Life Sciences Merchant Banking group and Venture Group at Burrill & Company, Executive in Residence at Momentum Biosciences, Program Officer for the National Cancer Institute in the Office of the Director (Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives), and research and business development roles at Caliper Life Sciences, NASA Ames Research Center, and Rohm & Haas Co. Linda completed the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Executive Management Program and holds a Ph.D. from the Program in Polymer Science and Technology (Materials Science and Chemical Engineering) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Chemistry (Biology) from the University of Pittsburgh.

Steve Konsek joined the National Science Foundation’s SBIR/STTR program in 2012 and has served as both a Program Director for the SBIR/STTR and the Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program. Prior to joining NSF, Steven was the Chief Technology Officer at Illumitex, a venture-backed company developing light emitting diode chips, packages and fixtures for general illumination. He previously served as Chief of Technical Staff at Glo, recognized as one of Europe’s top LED startups. Prior to Glo, Steven was the Director of Device R&D at Nantero, a memory startup. Throughout his career, Steven has developed innovative, game-changing technologies across a range of semiconductor applications. He holds numerous patents and publications in LEDs, memory, process integration and nanoscale devices. Steven has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington and a B.S. in Mathematics from Purdue University.

Ruth Shuman joined the National Science Foundation in August 2009 as a Program Director for Biological Technologies in the SBIR/STTR Program. Before coming to NSF, she was the founder, president, and CEO of a successful venture-backed life science company, Gentra Systems, Inc., that developed, manufactured, and sold products for genetic testing and research to clinical and research laboratories worldwide. Following Gentra’s acquisition, she held various consulting/advisory positions with start-up companies, and was CEO-In-Residence for Life Science with the University of Minnesota’s Venture Center evaluating the business potential of University-developed technology. She began her career as a faculty member at North Carolina State University and was a pioneer in the development of gene transfer and genetic engineering technology. Ruth holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in the area of Genetics and Cell Biology.

Henry Ahn joined the National Science Foundation in July 2016 as an SBIR/STTR Program Director. Prior to joining NSF, Henry managed seed/early stage investment programs for TEDCO for 12 years including Technology Commercialization Fund, TEDCO’s flagship seed funding program for technology-based companies in Maryland. During his time at TEDCO, Henry was actively involved with various entrepreneurs and entrepreneur support groups as a guest speaker, an advisory board member, a judge, a mentor, among others. Additionally, Henry was part of the licensing/supplier relations team at a biotechnology company called Upstate, where he successfully negotiated, licensed and commercialized approximately 190 biomedical research reagents from around the world. Henry has also done approximately 5 years of research, mostly in the field of immunology (including graduate work). Henry has an MBA from Rice University, an M.S. in biotechnology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a B.S. in biomedical engineering from Boston University.

Anna Brady-Estevez joined the National Science Foundation as SBIR/STTR Program Director leading Chemical and Environmental Technologies. In this role she brings breadth of background across entrepreneurship and venture capital, innovative research, and direction of corporate strategy and investments. Anna has served as a collaborator with numerous start-ups having worked as: an inventor for an early stage venture-backed start-up providing low-cost, low-energy portable water treatment, and a Principal Investor for an early stage venture firm. Anna’s contributions were recognized in 2009 when she was selected as one of ~30 Kauffman Fellows from around the globe, for leadership in innovation and venture capital. She served as Director of Corporate Strategy for leading multinationals including The AES Corporation and Cummins Inc., and advised numerous clients while serving as a management consultant for The Boston Consulting Group. Anna’s work in these roles resulted in over $6B of infrastructure investments with enhanced returns, identification of $B+ cost reduction opportunities, contributing to a core transformation team of a $T+ entity in oil & gas, and the implementation of several new technologies spanning: nanotechnology, advanced manufacturing, Big Data and Internet of Things, along with new equipment that enabled transforming energy economics. Earlier in her career, she performed research at the intersection of innovation and international relations with the Office of Naval Research at the US Embassy in Chile. Anna holds a PhD from Yale University in Chemical and Environmental Engineering, where she held a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship; and a BS in Chemical Engineering and BA in Spanish from The Johns Hopkins University.

Nancy Kamei is a Program Director focused on Medical Devices and Digital Health. In 2017, after several years of retirement, she joined the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships to serve the United States’ entrepreneurial ecosystem. For several years, she served as a National Instructor for the Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program, interacting with NSF and National Institutes of Health grantees, which inspired her to join the SBIR/STTR Program and continue working with innovators and entrepreneurs. Nancy has more than 20 years of experience as an investor, having selected and managed billions of dollars of investments of both public equities (Capital Group Companies) and venture capital (Intel Capital). She is also a serial entrepreneur, having been on the founding team of several Silicon Valley startups (Onyx Pharmaceuticals). After receiving her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from University of California, San Francisco, she started her career at Merck and then completed her Master of Business Administration at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Nancy also has more than 40 years of service to the non-profit sector. She recently relocated to the Washington, D.C. area after a lifetime in California.

Rajesh Mehta is a Program Director for Educational Technologies and Applications in the Small Business Innovation Research Program at the National Science Foundation. Until early 2018, his topic area was Advanced Manufacturing and Nanotechnology. Prior to joining NSF in 2012, he was a senior research technologist at Kodak where his 26-year career spanned work at Kodak Research Laboratories, and Manufacturing Research and Engineering Organization. His work covered a broad range of materials science based technologies related to photographic film and paper manufacturing, thermal, inkjet, and electro-photographic printing, and OLED device manufacturing. He has a B. Tech. degree in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Penn State, a post-doctoral fellowship at Imperial College, and a M.S. degree in New Product Development from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Muralidharan S. Nair is a Program Director in the areas of Electronic Hardware, Robotics, and Wireless Technologies with the SBIR/STTR Program. Prior to joining NSF in January 2003, he was the Founder CEO of a Bluetooth wireless product company. In this capacity, he raised equity capital for worldwide operations in the U.S., China and India. He designed, planned and implemented the product development cycle, and managed the marketing strategy, strategic alliances and business development processes. Before that, he was a Senior Systems Engineer at L-3 Communications where he provided strategic advice to the Executive VP for a complete re-plan of the Hughes contract for real-time, embedded ground control software for the $350M PANAMSAT communications satellite. Prior to joining L-3 Communications, he was a Mission Planner at Motorola Iridium where he was involved in all aspects of satellite operations including orbit determination, generating guidance targets and orbital slot placement. Before joining Iridium, he was a faculty member at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where he developed an entire Space Systems Design Lab from concept inception to fully operational mode and national prominence, and supervised five (5) space system designs, three (3) of which were winners in the National AIAA/Loral Design Competition. He is a recipient of a number of awards including NSF’s second highest award for meritorious service and the President’s Innovation Award for Space Systems Design courses while at Embry-Riddle. Murali is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology and the University of Texas. He is a registered professional engineer in the State of Florida.

Peter Atherton comes to the NSF with a broad background in the physical sciences, and extensive experience in technology development and commercialization. Before joining NSF Peter was originally CEO, and most recently CTO, at MIKOH Corporation Ltd, a publicly traded company that he founded in Sydney, Australia. Prior to MIKOH he spent approximately 7 years at the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC Australia) where he managed optical fiber communications R&D, including approximately 14 months in the UK at British Telecom’s Martlesham Heath R&D laboratories. While at OTC his research group made world-leading advances in high-speed optical communications technologies, some of which were commercialized via spin-off companies. He also managed the externally contracted development and commercialization of a number of optical fiber and optoelectronic technologies, and was instrumental in establishing a commercialization center for specialized optical fibers at the University of Sydney. While at MIKOH Corporation he was instrumental in developing and commercializing technologies in a range of fields including diffractive optics, laser-based marking, radio frequency identification and internet-based personal authentication. He moved to the US in 1998 to further develop the company’s technologies and markets. Peter holds a Ph.D. in physics (Quantum Optics), and a BEng (Mech) – both from the University of Queensland (Australia).

Rick Schwerdtfeger joined the National Science Foundation in August 2016 as the SBIR/STTR Program Director for the Semiconductors and Photonics, and Internet of Things (IoT) portfolios. Prior to joining NSF, Rick was the CTO and Co-Founder of the Advanced RenewableEnergy Company, a clean-tech and semiconductor equipment company, where he led the technology development and customer deployment of nearly $200MM of equipment in the first 4 years. Additionally he was the COO of Pica Solar, a DOE-funded solar cell technologies start-up. Rick is also an advisory board member of ClearCove Systems, a waste water and renewable energy company. In addition to these entrepreneurial ventures, Rick was a Senior Project Scientist at the non-profit Edison Materials Technology Center, a Senior R&D Scientist at Saint Gobain, and the Crystal Growth Group leader at Alpha Spectra. He started his career as a Staff Scientist doing solar energy research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Rick has grown some of the largest sapphire, calcium fluoride, sodium iodide, and copper indium diselenide crystals in the world, which have been used to lower costs of technology for energy, lighting, radiation detection and other industrial and photonic applications. Rick has spent his career taking the “art” out of science, and replacing it with good engineering, experimentation and automation to solve challenging problems in the renewable energy, clean water, smart grid and high-tech world. Rick holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the Colorado School of Mines, an M.S. in Applied Physics from Pittsburg State University, and a B.S. in Physics and Science Education from the University of Dubuque.

Ben Schrag is the Senior Program Director for the SBIR/STTR programs. He joined the NSF as a Program Director in 2009, leading the Advanced Materials and Instrumentation portfolio in the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. Prior to NSF, he was the Director of Research and Development at Micro Magnetics, where he led a development effort to commercialize a new family of high-performance magnetic microsensor products for demanding consumer and military applications. During this time, he also served as a visiting scientist at Brown University and as the Principal Investigator on a number of federal grants and contracts, including NSF Phase I and Phase II Small Business Innovation Research projects and an Advanced Technology Program award from NIST. Ben received his Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University.

Executive staff

Barry W. Johnson is the Division Director for the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP) at NSF. Prior to joining NSF he was the Senior Associate Dean in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. He continues to hold the L. A. Lacy Distinguished Professorship at the University of Virginia. In 1998 he was a founder of Privaris, Inc., a biometrics security company. While on leave from the University of Virginia from 2002 to 2006 he served as Chairman, President, and CEO of Privaris. Prior to joining the University of Virginia he worked as a research engineer for Harris Corporation in their Government Aerospace Systems Division. He is the author of two books, nine book chapters and more than 150 journal and conference articles. He is also an inventor on 34 issued patents and more than 30 applications currently pending. Barry received the B.S., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1979, 1980, and 1983, respectively. He is a Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to fault-tolerant computing. He is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. His major awards include the 1992 C. Holmes MacDonald Outstanding Young Electrical Engineering Professor Award from Eta Kappa Nu, the 1991 Frederick Emmons Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, a 1992 Alan Berman Research Publications Award from the Department of the Navy, a 1990 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia, election to the Raven Society in 2007, a 1997 David A. Harrison Outstanding Faculty Award from the University of Virginia, and the 2011 Outstanding Faculty Award from the University of Virginia Engineering Foundation.

Graciela Narcho currently serves as the Deputy Division Director for the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP) at NSF. Gracie was named the Deputy Division Director for IIP and the Director of the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization and Small Business Research and Development at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in March of 2015. She has 25 years of experience in science and engineering administration and management. Gracie came to IIP in 2013 from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) where her most recent position was Staff Associate in the Office of the Assistant Director. During her 10 year tenure at CISE, she served in multiple senior positions including Deputy Assistant Director for the CISE Directorate, Deputy Division Director for the Division of Computer and Network Systems, and Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Grants at the Department of Health and Human Services. She was also the program manager for several large CISE grants, including the Global Environments for Networking Innovation (GENI), the National Center for Women in IT (NCWIT), and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC). Prior to joining CISE, Gracie was a Grants Officer in the NSF Division of Grants and Agreements, where she provided business oversight of NSF’s Federally Funded Research and Development Centers and large facility projects. Gracie holds a MPA in Government Contracting from George Washington University and a B.A. in Economics from Tufts University.